


Domesticitas interrupta

by isamariposa



Series: Pretending [2]
Category: Chernobyl (TV 2019)
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Idiots in Love, Period-Typical Sexism, Unhappy Ending, Vaginal Sex, Women in Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-08 16:56:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19872961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isamariposa/pseuds/isamariposa
Summary: Missing scenes throughout episode 4: an unplanned visit to Pripyat, a phone call, and academic disagreements.Ulana comes to terms with her rather inconvenient feelings for Valery, while still trying to investigate how the explosion came to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the fictional representation of Valery Legasov as it appeared on HBO Chernobyl (2019) and the fictional character of Ulana Khomyuk.
> 
> Some notes:  
> 1) Follows directly after [Let's Be Alive Together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19241947) so you might want to read that first. tl;dr: they pretended to go on a date after Ulana was jailed to forget the awfulness and ended up talking about their lives and having emotionally charged sex.  
> 2) I fudged the dates of when the other reactors began working.  
> 3) Many thanks to the folks on the Discord server for some much needed plot unfucking in this first chapter  
> 4) I personally think Boris is awesome, but Ulana doesn't (always) think so. Valoris subtext if you squint in some parts.  
> 

* * *

Ulana tosses and turns in the small bed, unable to sleep. She usually can lie to herself very convincingly and, in other circumstances, she might find several reasonable hypotheses for this bout of insomnia that has plagued her this past week. 

The equation system for the Xenon-135 decay, to begin with: the numbers she comes up with are astronomical, borderline ridiculous, nearly impossible to feed into the model she has set up. Is the model wrong, she wonders parenthetically, but no: Ulana is used to working with these mathematical functions, their asymptotic behavior familiar and comfortable under her pencil. The chemistry, on the other hand... She's had to borrow a handful of textbooks to refresh her knowledge, almost embarrassingly so: in recent years, most of her focus has been rather theoretical, as her last three papers can testify, and she usually leaves these basic tasks to the junior members of the lab. It's ridiculous: Valery would know how to fix this in the blink of an eye, but they're thousands of kilometers apart, and she can't ask as readily as she'd like.

And no: that's precisely what she mustn't think of. To start with, she should not be referring to him as Valery in her head. There he must remain Legasov. That night they spent together (mere hours, really) must change nothing. They were only pretending, after all. Legasov could fix the equation: then she must phone him, or write him a letter, and be done with it.

But in truth, frustrations of scientific nature have never prevented her from sleeping, so this reasonable hypothesis falls flat. Not even in the frantic days leading up to her doctoral thesis had she been unable to cat-nap on top of her textbooks, an uncanny skill she perfected as the youngest child in a home full of noise. 

Very well, then, she reasons with herself. A second hypothesis might be that she is simply overwrought. She has, after all, been under an unspeakable amount of emotional distress lately, even for her usually impervious self - starting from the moment the alarm started blaring in the lab as Dmitry opened the windows. When she closes her eyes, it isn't the destructive blue glow devouring the air up into infinity that she sees. She sees the bodies of the workers, rendered bare flesh, and she hears their screams just as they echoed down the halls of that ghastly hospital. Ulana had no idea bodies could look like that. No amount of reading about the dangers of radiation exposure could have ever prepared her for the sight of people - young people, some as young as her own son - suffering so much and yet still remaining alive, with no relief until death finally took them. 

Valery asked her, _Do you want to stop_? and in that moment a part of her wanted to scream that yes, she did want to stop. She wanted to stop seeing them and hearing them at least. She wanted to stop the images of their suffering from staying so indelibly seared into her mind. But he was right, damn him. Ulana couldn't stop, wouldn't stop. How did he know her so well, _why_ did he know her so well? Sometimes she wonders, horribly, if his words to her in that darkened prison cell weren't carefully designed to pull the right strings of her scientific drive and push her back into work - but no, that is insane. Valery isn't shrewd or calculating. He was speaking from his heart, in a rare moment of vulnerability, acknowledging that they are the same, he and she. Two lunatics. Two scientists.

Oh, what's the use of pretending, really. _This_ is what isn't letting Ulana sleep. It's frankly embarrassing.

It isn't as if she's a young girl of fifteen, ignorant of her own body and ready to make eyes at the first man to fondle her under the skirt. She recognized the post-coital high for what it was and dismissed it, expecting it to be gone the next morning. But it wasn't. It lingered the next day, and the day after that, intoxicating her with an euphoria rather dissonant with her current grim circumstances. Ulana was positively giddy for an entire week. Snippets of their time together assaulted her mind at the most inopportune times, intrusive thoughts mercifully not too sexual in nature, though at least _that_ would have been easier to deal with: the look in Valery's eyes as he fucked her, how tightly he intertwined their fingers, how his lips lingered on her forehead afterwards. Her brain apparently zeroed on these kernels of infinitesimal happiness and replayed the scenes for her over and over, perhaps hoping to counteract the horrors of her day-to-day investigation.

 _Fool_ , she scolds herself, and punches the pillow in frustration.

It just so happens that the pillow is part of the problem, too. After all, how can she tell herself to stop thinking of Valery when she's in his flat, in his room, lying on _his bed_? That night, before they said their goodbyes, Valery handed her a key to his flat. _'Why don't you stay there while I'm gone? Cheaper than a hotel. Feed my cat while you're at it,_ ' he said with a bashful smile that made him look like a boy. It made sense, of course. Why waste money in a hotel room already monitored by the KGB, when Valery's flat would remain empty? What she hadn't anticipated is that everything would smell like him and remind her of him, ensnaring her in all things Valery like a spider catching its unsuspecting prey. Ulana is far too old for this and yet she presses her face into the pillow, very briefly, breathing in his scent surreptitiously before she jumps out of bed. Ridiculous.

The flat is in the darkness, but she's been living there long enough that she can make her way to the kitchen without seeing. The cat is looking at her when she turns on the light. Valery has a clock there on the table but she refuses to look at it and makes it lie face down. Ulana sighs and sets the small samovar on the stove before starting to put some order in the notes she's left scattered over the table. Getting them organized is a tedious process, but she finds the repetitiveness soothing, in a way. She might as well work if she can't sleep: that darned equation lies there, teasing her from the page. Before she can reach for the calculator, the cat comes rub against her legs. 

"I bet you miss him, hmm?" Ulana says, bending down to pet him. Valery never told her his name. He meows, giving her the kind of enigmatic look only cats can master. "Yes, alright," she tells him. "I miss him too."

There's no reason why she can't go to Pripyat. Other than the radiation, of course, but she already received the worst dose she could ever get back in April, when the core was still burning - sometimes she shakes her head at herself for having exposed herself like that. But what was she to do? Valery was only a chemist. Someone actually trained in nuclear physics had to direct those poor soldiers on how to take measurements and not die in the attempt. Not one of her finest moments, in hindsight, but it was moderately worth it for the horrified admiration in Valery's gaze when he saw her shouting instructions at the soldiers while dressed in ill-fitting military slacks.

In any case: Ulana could go back, if she wanted. She has clearance to come and go out of the exclusion zone, it would only be a matter of waiting for a helicopter to become available. But for what? _The equation_ , her brain supplies eagerly. Tempting as it is, it hardly justifies the cost and the time to fly there. _To see him, then_ , her brain suggests, even more unhelpfully. Ulana shakes her head. This is why male scientists never take their female counterparts seriously. Here she is, immersed in a crucial investigation that affects the lives of millions, and she's letting herself be talked into sentiment. She'd slap herself, if she could. It must be all those years of loneliness piling up on her, though she'd rather be caught dead than to admit it. 

But then: what is a day or two in the grand scheme of things, when her own are numbered? Surely she can afford this?

"Fine. I'll go see him," she tells the cat in a whisper, still petting him. "Will you be alright two days on your own?"

* * *

What does one wear to an irradiated zone in the summer? Ulana rarely overthins her clothes, but the question does give her pause. She took one day, early into her takeover of Valery's flat, to go back to Minsk and bring some essentials: a summery dress was most certainly not included. In any case, she abhors the thought of strutting around like an airheaded thing, full of color, into a disaster zone where it's hard enough for men to listen to her to begin with. She settles for a grey dress that's seen better days, severe and practical, light enough for the weather but also covered enough to fool herself into thinking her skin will be spared any damage. _Triple fool_ , she tells herself as she boards the helicopter that morning, clutching her briefcase full of notes against her chest like a girl might cling to a doll.

Pripyat from the air has an eerie liveliness to it: at first glance, it looks like any other town, with its rows of tall buildings, street grids, open parks. But it's a hollow city, empty, devoid of life. Out in the fields, Ulana can see bulldozers turning the soil over and over. She hopes those soldiers are wearing adequate breathing protection. Closer to the airstrip, they are bulldozing what used to be a pine forest, but the trees are dead in the middle of summer, their sick leaves having taken on a reddish color. Ulana looks away, towards the plant. They've begun setting the foundations for the sarcophagus around the perimeter. Her gaze is drawn at first to the roof of reactor 4, where she can still (still!) see graphite and debris, but she blanches when she notices that reactor 1 appears to be operational. Good lord, why is it being used? Who is manning it?

A lieutenant she's never seen before receives her, rather impatiently, when the helicopter touches down.

"And you're working for Professor Legasov?" he asks, after checking that her name is on the special clearance list and that it matches her papers.

"I'm working _with_ him, not for him," she corrects, quick to bristle. "I'm a nuclear physicist. Write that down in your clipboard."

The man scowls at her, but does write it down with fastidious handwriting. He hands her a dosimeter. Ulana stares at it.

"Keep it for someone who needs it more than I," she tells him.

The lieutenant shrugs and waves at someone to drive her to the Polissya hotel. Her driver is a very young boy: baby-faced, likely fresh out of school, gangly limbs not quite fitting into his uniform. His name is Sergei. She doesn't recall ever seeing him before, but he claims to recognize her: she made quite an impression among the soldiers in May, apparently, when she demonstrated basic safety around the grounds. In _May_. It's late July, and this child is still stationed here, absorbing radiation every day.

"Don't they give you any leave?" she asks, finding it hard to breathe.

"Oh yes," he says, blissfully ignorant. "One week every month. I'd rather take them all at once for a longer holiday. My family is from Tomsk, too far to go for just one week."

The vehicle, an old UAZ, coughs and stutters as Sergei shifts gears. Out in the street, a worker is turning over the soil of the grass patch by the sidewalk. He is not wearing a respirator. It's not that he doesn't have one: it hangs from his neck, unused.

"Stop!" Ulana tells Sergei, and rolls the window down. "Put on your mask!" she shouts at the worker, who glances up at her in surprise.

"It's too hot for that!" he says, shaking his head.

"Put it on!" she shouts again, and Sergei chuckles and steps on the gas to drive away.

"Don't worry," he says. "The dose is very low here." 

"Is that what they tell you?"

He nods. Ulana resists the urge to hide her face in her hands. She presses her fist against her mouth, discreetly, as if to stop an imaginary scream. 

"Who mans the hotel?" she asks, as the Polissya comes in view, desperate to change the subject.

"Us soldiers," the boy answers. "It's an easy shift: changing bed sheets, cleaning toilets, laundry, kitchen duty. Everyone wants it. I've been trying to be assigned here for weeks."

There can't be many occupied rooms. Valery, Shcherbina, high-ranking officers perhaps. Oh, and the KGB goons, of course. When she left for Moscow, Valery promised he'd bring other scientists to help him, but she later found out he was reluctant to bring in anyone else on a permanent basis. It's not good: scientists aren't meant to work alone. 

"Please go home to Tomsk, Sergei," Ulana tells him as she gets out of the car. She touches his hand, and the boy's face grows beet red.

Another young soldier welcomes her in the lobby, where's she's handed a clean towel and a ticket for meals along with the key to her room. It's the same room she had when she first stayed here, further confirming her theory about the lack of guests. At this time of the day, the soldier tells her, Professor Legasov is usually in one of the banquet rooms working with Deputy Chairman Shcherbina - should he let them know she's arrived? Ulana refuses. She goes up to her room to drop off her things, glances at herself in the mirror like the fool that she is, and makes her way back down.

The smell of cigarettes alone would have guided her. When she opens the door to the conference room, Valery is standing by the table with a cigarette dangling from his lips, not unlike the first day they met. Shcherbina is lounging in one of the chairs at the other end of the table, but Ulana doesn't notice him at first, not after her gaze locks with Valery's. His eyes widen behind his thick glasses, and for a moment that passes much too quickly, he looks almost happy - but then something clouds his gaze, and he frowns at her.

"Ula-," he starts staying, then corrects himself after an awkward pause where his cigarette almost falls, "Khomyuk. What are you doing here?"

Ulana steps in the room, with her briefcase in front of her as if to cover herself with a shield when she advances.

"I had questions," she says, perhaps a little too dryly.

Valery brings his fingers to his cigarette, takes a long drag, and then crushes it into an ashtray that's almost obscenely full. He extends a hand towards her briefcase as he puffs out the smoke. She hands it to him - her heart is beating so fast, ridiculously so; it makes her angry at herself all over again.

"The cat?" Valery asks, before he opens the briefcase.

Ulana just has to roll her eyes. "The cat is fine. I left him enough food for two days."

"Two days?" Shcherbina quips, from the corner where he's sitting. It startles her: she forgot he was there for a moment. "This is a quick visit."

He sounds... amused? But his face remains inscrutable. Ulana doesn't quite know what to make of the way Shcherbina is looking at her right now, feeling as if she's just stepped into a joke she isn't privy to. She glances at Valery, hesitantly, but he's reading her notes in silence - though he does look a little flustered.

"You didn't need to come all the way here for this," he says, glancing up from her notes once he's satiated his curiosity. Ulana feels her face warming. Fool, triple fool. "You could have called," Valery goes on. He doesn't sound accusing or disappointed. Only puzzled.

"Yes, I know," she bites back, anger rising at finding herself exposed in front of Shcherbina. She steps forward, crowding Valery's space unnecessarily. "But I wanted to _see_ you... Valery," she adds, using his first name in a deliberate manner.

His eyes widen again, and he blushes as hard as the young soldier did, earlier. He drops his gaze so bashfully that it knocks the breath out of Ulana. _We're both fools_ , she realizes, and they must be quite a sight, with both their faces red - out of the corner of her eye, she's sure she can see Shcherbina laughing. Valery won't meet her gaze again, but he starts scribbling something on a sheet he's seemingly been using as a draft for calculations. He pushes it towards her without a word. It's an address, here in Pripyat. He's also written "Leave at 7:45" and underlined the hour three times. Ulana takes the note and folds it in two, vaguely confused about the secrecy but understanding she mustn't question it just now. 

"You are welcome to stay, I suppose," Valery says after an awkward pause that stretches on for excruciatingly long. Ulana takes a step back, and somehow ends up seating herself in one of the chairs. "We were trying to determine the next priority for the cleanup operation," he adds, gesturing towards the map lying on the table.

"The roof," Ulana says, as if it were evident.

"No... Yes, of course the roof, that is our first priority, but it isn't possible at the moment."

"And why not?"

"You know why not. We can't send more men to die like that." He opens a folder of his own and rummages in it before pulling a sheet, full of equations. "Mere minutes would kill anyone in some of the areas up there."

She puts her glasses on and reaches for a pencil to check Valery's calculations at once. They are correct, for the most part. In the highest area he's estimated five minutes for a fatal dose. Ulana scratches that and corrects it to three. Valery glares at her, but accepts the correction.

"I was thinking of a robot," he says.

"A robot? What, capable of withstanding that amount of radiation without short-circuiting?"

"Yes. I was thinking of the lunar rover."

Ulana hums, thoughtfully. "That could work. Hopefully it can be operated from far enough a distance without being fried. But that won't work for the top area."

"Yes, I know."

"Those numbers for the roof. Are they estimates or measurements?"

"Estimates," he says, and Ulana lets out a sigh of relief: she wasn't sure Valery had enough of a sense of self-preservation to not go up to the roof himself. 

"Whose?" she asks, raising an eyebrow, though she already knows the answer.

"Mine," he says.

She gestures with her hand to check those calculations as well. Valery scoffs, but does hand her his notes. These are far more complex. She throws her full attention into them, if only to calm herself down a notch. This clandestine rendezvous... to avoid the bugged rooms in the hotel, she supposes. The room they are in is likely bugged as well. And yet she can hear Valery arguing something with Shcherbina, something about the perimeter of the forest - not caring if they are being listened to. The calculations are fine, in any case. She hands them back to Valery, and he beams at her when he sees she's not corrected anything, a smile so genuine Ulana feels wretched for not returning it.

"Legasov," she says, keeping her tone as professional as she can manage. "Why is reactor 1 being operated?"

Valery's gaze grows vacant behind his glasses. He shakes his head.

"Kiev needs power," Shcherbina answers, when it becomes clear Valery won't. Ulana glances at him, shocked by how nonchalant he looks, and turns her attention back to Valery, who still won't meet her gaze.

"It's madness!" she tells him. "Until we can pinpoint exactly what went wrong, it's too reckless to have the other reactors up and running as if nothing happened. What if there's structural damage..."

"There isn't," Valery cuts off without looking at her.

"What if the conditions for what went wrong were inadvertently recreated, what if our cooling system fails and the resulting explosion affects the remaining reactors?"

"Kiev needs power," Shcherbina repeats, though he sounds more fatalistic now.

"But at what cost? Are the current workers given adequate protection in there?"

"Of course they are."

"Are they? I met a liquidator on my way here who was wearing no respirator: he said it was too warm out. A boy of 18 drove me here, he's convinced the radiation levels aren't harmful, and he's already spent two months..."

"Stop," Valery says, a hand on his forehead. "Stop! Khomyuk, stop. I know, alright? I know. I am doing the best I can. _We_ are doing the best we can."

Their best is not enough, she thinks. For one moment it seems he's going to reach for her hand, but instead he lies it flat on the table, in the space between them. Still, Ulana stares at the gesture, fixating on the way Valery stretches his fingers then curls them up into a fist.

"I need you here," he adds. "But don't make this harder than it already is."

 _She's_ making it harder? Ulana takes a deep breath, ready to be angry at him, but he meets her gaze at last, disarming her at once. 

"Then give me something I can fix," she says, a little stiffly because of the knot in her throat.

Valery sighs, and slides the map closer to her.

* * *

The 'leave at 7:45' part starts making sense as the hour nears. It's the time when the KGB rats change shifts, and for a brief moment, minutes long, the doors of the Polissya aren't watched. Ulana slips out unnoticed, but she doesn't see Valery. She looks over her shoulder several times, but no one seems to be following her once she starts walking in the deserted streets of Pripyat. Her shoes are too noisy, and the enormous quiet of it all only adds to the paranoia. This ghost town... It would have been cheerful in late July at this time of day, people returning home from work, families gathering together, people enjoying the late sunset... Instead, _this_. And she still hasn't worked out the _why_ , and instead of continuing with the research she's wasting her time. Ulana shakes her head at herself.

The building she's supposed to be going into looks like all the others in that street, completely ordinary. Its front faces away from the plant, a quick glance tells Ulana most of the fallout flew in the other direction when the disaster struck. Not that it means much, given the magnitude of it all. The front door is unlocked when she pushes it, taking care not to touch the metal brassard, and she's huffing a little by the time she makes it to the fifth floor.

It smells of cigarettes.

Ulana takes a deep breath before opening the door of the apartment. Valery is sitting on the floor of the main hallway - the dying light of sunset bathes the flat in a soft glow as it reflects on the worn-down blue wallpaper. He glances up at her, but instead of standing he rests his head against the wall as he puffs out some smoke.

"Were you followed?" he asks, sounding disinterested.

"I don't think so," Ulana answers.

Is she supposed to join him on the floor? She's not about to. As she steps inside, she notices he's removed his shoes, so she kicks off her own. She walks past him into the main room of the apartment, recognizing its boring, familiar layout for having seen it hundreds of times before in other places. Whoever lived here left everything just as it was, the children's school books on the kitchen table, laundry waiting to be folded misplaced all over the furniture, pots in the stove - as if they'd only stepped out for a moment: domesticitas interrupta. These orphaned mementos give the flat the semblance of a shrine for a life, for a family that is no more. Ulana feels like an intruder.

"What is this?" she asks. "Who lived here?"

"I don't know," Valery says. He's standing now, and has put off his cigarette on a small plate. He moves closer, his steps rendered silent by his socket feet. "But I like it here. There's something about it that reminds me of home."

It looks nothing like his flat in Moscow, but Ulana has a vague inkling that he doesn't mean it literally. Unless he means his childhood home, which... She lets out a sigh, unwilling to press more about this if it's going to unlock an intimacy she isn't prepared for, despite her feeling raw and exposed since the moment she saw him this morning. She joins him at the window: the street is empty. No one followed her.

"But why here?" she asks. "How did you think to come here?"

Valery glances at her, as if she startled him out of a daydream. His gaze lingers on her lips and she _trembles_ for a moment, thinking he's going to kiss her then and now. But he looks away, out to the street again.

"I used to take long walks the first weeks, looking for quiet. Hoping to lose the spies. It worked in the sense that it bored them seeing me visit apartment after apartment with a dosimeter in hand, so they left me alone eventually. There was..." He takes a deep breath. "A cat. There was a cat here. He died after a bit."

So much for avoiding vulnerability. Valery looks heartbroken for a moment, as if still devastated by the loss of this innocent creature in the wake of all this madness. Ulana steps closer and touches his arm, hoping this belated comfort won't be out of place. He looks at her lips again, and his time he slides an arm around her waist, pulling her close - it shocks her, briefly, how strong he pulls, how hard he holds her against him.

"I'd come here in the evenings," he says, "and imagine you here. With me. Living here with me."

Oh. _Oh_. Ulana was bracing herself for a kiss but this... this? It's as if the floor collapsed under her feet, leaving a gaping hole right by her feet, a dark abyss she's afraid to peer into. Valery touches her hair with his free hand, brushing it out of her forehead.

"Valery," she warns, but he presses his fingers to her lips.

"Don't say it." He flashes her a shy smile. "You taught me this, remember? In Moscow."

She wants to tell him that pretending to go out to dinner, even with the emotionally charged sex that followed, is so far removed from a fantasy of living together it may well be light years away, in another galaxy. All she does, however, is press a light kiss to the fingers against her mouth.

Encouraged, Valery elaborates, "Even now. I could have just come back from work to find you here, waiting for me."

No, she cannot do this. Ulana steps away from him, a little briskly, and moves across this living room that isn't hers until she reaches the kitchen. How to tell him that for her what he's imagining scores closer to a nightmare than a pleasant dream? Once, too long ago, she had a home like this: along with it came the petty fighting, the screaming children, the expectation of meals she never had time or skill to prepare, the disquiet of returning home too late when everyone was already asleep. 

"Did I say something wrong?" Valery asks petulantly, having followed her to the kitchen.

"Many things," she answers without turning to face him. She sounds more cross than she intended. "I wouldn't be _waiting_ for you, to begin with. My job would keep me away for as long as yours, so I'd have come home as late as you, and there's no dinner to be had."

Valery chuckles. "Must you always fight me, even in this?"

She turns towards him, expecting disapproval in his gaze, but she's stunned to find he's looking at her with... affection. Ulana feels her face warming.

"Well," she says. "[They did warn you I was difficult.](https://66.media.tumblr.com/486ea7c4183b30216066c39415fb0906/tumblr_pu6tev5SEH1sgn55io1_r1_640.png)"

"Just as I hoped," Valery completes, not missing a beat. "Fine: I had dinner at the canteen before I came home. Would that suit you better?"

The ease with which he defused the imaginary situation thaws something in Ulana, and the warmth in her face starts spreading to the rest of her body. She nods. Playing house still lies very low on her list of desirable hypothetical scenarios, but maybe, just maybe, in another life, in other circumstances - a home with Valery would not be a nightmare. She thinks of his flat in Moscow, of his books on the table, of his cat on the sofa, of his scent on the pillow. Ulana doesn't need to imagine what it would be like: she's been living with him for nearly two months, in a manner of speaking. She takes a step closer, and so does Valery: his hands find her waist again, holding her, touching her.

"How was your day?" she asks, making an effort to play along as she loosens one button of his shirt. He's not wearing a tie today and he's rolled up the sleeves of his yellow shirt.

"Dreadful," he says. "I fought with a colleague all day."

Ulana smirks. "She must be very annoying."

"Incredibly so. But she keeps me on my toes." Valery removes his glasses - this small gesture makes her shiver with anticipation. "I'd be lost without her," he adds, dropping his voice to a whisper.

She shakes her head at his breaking character. "Now you're making me jealous."

"Sorry," he says as he notices as well, and smiles sheepishly. "I think I'm still not good at pretending."

"We don't have to."

"I _have_ to," Valery whispers. "Or I might spoil it all by saying something very stupid."

Something stupid? Ulana doesn't have time to wonder what it is because Valery holds her face with both hands, and presses a kiss so hungry to her mouth that she gasps into it. She reaches forward, trying to grab him, and her hands find the waistband of his trousers. His belt is easy to unbuckle; the clip-ons of his suspenders, less so, and by this time Valery's hands have stopped holding her face to slide down her back and rest over the curve of her ass. He breaks the kiss for a moment, looking at her - his face is red, flustered.

"This dress," he says, his voice a little hoarse. "I've been wanting to rip it off you since I saw you this morning."

"Don't you dare," she warns, because she didn't bring a change of clothes, and she really doesn't fancy a helicopter flight back to Moscow with buttons missing.

But Valery takes a step forward, moving her along with the impulse, and Ulana feels the wall hit against her back as he begins undoing the top buttons, enough for him to slip a hand inside. He glances up at her, a mix of awe and mischief in his gaze as he sees she's not wearing a bra - she removed it before leaving the hotel in a last-minute bout of indecency. He kisses her again, his hand large enough to cover her entire breast as he cups it. It's almost embarrassing how ragged she sounds when he fondles her, but Valery answers her moan with one of his own, and when she slips her hand into his trousers he shudders from head to toe. He bucks into her hand, his tip already moist under her fingers, and he starts pressing more urgent kisses to her neck.

"Tell me," she whispers as she strokes him. "Did you touch yourself while I was away?"

Valery stills, and she doesn't need to look at him to know he's wide-eyed when he answers, in a gasp, "Yes."

"Me too," she admits in his ear, worked up enough to feel no shame. "In your bed."

"Ulana," he groans, pulling back to look at her with surprise and a hint of outrage. Then he smiles at her and brings a hand down to lift the skirt of her dress, sliding it up high enough to tug her panties to the side. "Was it good?" he asks, an eyebrow raised. Ulana barely manages a nod before he starts rubbing her, and her mind draws a blank as pleasure overwhelms her, shockingly fast.

When she manages to focus on him again, it's to find that he's saying things into her ear, that he's been saying them all along while he was touching her. Valery says, pleadingly almost, "One of these days, I'm finally going to fuck you with no clothes on."

She can't help laughing a little into the kiss he presses to her lips. The first time it happened was by her own design, because that tie Valery was wearing had been driving her mad for _days_ and she could not resist the chance of having him keep it on. But now there's nothing stopping them, barring perhaps a lingering prudishness about doing this in a stranger's kitchen, abandoned or not - and her own ridiculous insecurities. No one has seen her entirely naked in years.

"I don't think you'll like it as much as you imagine," she warns him.

"I will love it," he says, so firmly that her heart gives a pang and she suddenly wants this, having no idea that she ever did.

"Then do it now," she whispers, taking a leap of faith.

"No," Valery says, and no man should be allowed to look so openly earnest when his fingers are still inside her. "Let me have something to look forward to... when this nightmare is over."

Ulana mutters a curse, because he's now given _her_ something to look forward to - implying there will be an afterwards, a world where Pripyat is but a bad memory, where the reactor spills no more poison, where in a decade, perhaps, they will be alive together instead of in their graves. She barely has the time to swallow the bitterness of this thought that he pulls his fingers out and grabs her one her thighs to lift it against his hip. She isn't as flexible as she once was and has to blink back some pain as he slides into her, digging her further against the wall. 

"That day," he goes on, breathless, "I'll make love to you all night long."

She'd like to look away, because his eyes are too intense (too hungry, too needy), but she can't seem to tear her gaze from his, mesmerized the slight changes of his face, of his expression as he starts moving inside her. The ugly blue wallpaper of the kitchen, half peeled off, rubs against her back with each of his thrusts. She had her arms on his shoulders, for balance, but she lifts a hand to touch Valery's face, stroking his cheek, pushing some whiffs of hair out of his forehead. He tilts his head to meet the caress, and finally, finally closes his eyes, allowing Ulana to breathe more easily and to ride this new wave of pleasure instead of letting herself be drowned in this unexpected onslaught of emotions.

When it's done, she puts her leg down at once, forcing Valery out perhaps a little too abruptly - he makes a strangled noise and has to support himself on the wall. There's a bit of a mess that ends up on her dress, but she's too breathless to care about it. Unsteady on her feet, dizzy, Ulana slides down the wall until she's sitting on the floor with her bent legs spread out. She can hear Valery still heaving, somewhere above her. He's right: there's something about this apartment that feels eerily like home. She can easily imagine herself standing up, pecking at his lips, and disappearing into the bedroom to change. They'd have tea at the kitchen table with the radio on, and they'd sit in comfortable silence as they both read their work for the next day. How is she supposed to go back to Moscow after this? How is she supposed to carry on with her life as if _this_ hadn't grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her upside down, and left her there hanging with no hope of ever going back upright?

"I shouldn't have come here," she whispers. She feels, horrifyingly, some tears threatening to fill her eyes, but she forbids herself to even consider it. 

Valery tucks himself back in and kneels next to her, resting a hand on her thigh. His gaze - she has got to stop looking into his eyes, because he's an open book, and she can read plainly that at the very least he feels a lot of affection for her. The other word, the one that starts with L, she doesn't dare consider.

"No," he agrees, speaking very softly. "But I'm glad you did."

He pulls her into his arms. Ulana takes a deep breath and presses her face to Valery's chest, hiding there, burying herself in his embrace. In another universe, governed by irrational numbers and where time is but a variable, fickle and not fixed, she'd stay like this in his arms for years, frozen, removed from the reality that hosts a yawning nightmare a mere three kilometers away.

"I think we stopped pretending long ago," Valery says against her hair, his voice hoarse. "Didn't we?"

"But we have to," she answers, echoing what he said earlier and silencing the cry of protest from her heart. "There's no other way."

"I wish there was."

He helps her stand. As she straightens her dress, it becomes apparent that Valery did in fact rip off one of the buttons, the one right on the tightest part of her chest, and there's a rather telling stain smeared on the left side of the skirt. She'll make an interesting snapshot of debauchery for the KGB agents when she returns to the hotel with her dress torn and filthy. When she tells Valery, they end up laughing about it - hollow, forced laughs. After putting his glasses back on, he finds the missing button where it rolled under the kitchen table. 

"I happen to have needle and thread in my room," he suggests, sounding hopeful.

Instead of asking how on earth _that_ came to be, Ulana allows herself to imagine what it would be like - spending the night in his room, fixing the button, washing the stain, borrowing one of his shirts to sleep. Having inane conversations out loud to fool their unwelcome listeners, and whispering into each other's ears when discussing important matters. Waking up next to him the next morning. Dressing in front of him, kissing his lips goodbye before she heads back to the airstrip.

"Fine," she says, still cautious, but Valery's face lights up. She relents, then, and smiles back at him.

Maybe, just maybe, things don't have to be so bleak.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

The phone startles Ulana at the kitchen table and the cat jumps from her lap, disturbed as well. She takes off her reading glasses. This can't be anything good: it's 1:57 in the morning. The fears gallop in her mind as she makes her way to the phone: something happened to the core, something happened to the remaining reactors, something happened to Valery. She picks up, but once she holds the receiver to her ear, she doesn't know what to say. Should she say her last name? The KGB is aware, naturally, that she's been living in Valery's flat, but she'd rather not advertise it unless strictly necessary.

"Yes?" she answers, after a pause.

"Ulana!" 

She breathes out a sigh of relief: it's Valery, and he sounds... suspiciously giddy.

"It's almost two in the morning," she says, unimpressed.

"So? Were you asleep?"

"I wasn't, though I should have been. And you too, for that matter."

"I thought to call you." Even over the phone he manages to sound whimsical. "Well, to call my own number, really."

"Valery, are you drunk?" she asks, biting back a smile.

"No! I mean, yes. Yes, a little. But that's not why I'm calling."

"What happened?"

Ulana tries to find somewhere to sit, but the phone cord doesn't stretch long enough, so she settles on the floor with her legs crossed. The cat joins her, interested in the warmth of her lap that he lost earlier. Valery sighs so loudly into the phone she can picture his dismay quite clearly. 

"Masha happened," he says. "Again."

They made it clear, when she left for Moscow the second time, that they wouldn't phone each other to talk about work unless they exhausted all other possibilities, because no lines out of Pripyat could be considered secure. What they never managed to agree on was a proper cipher, and Ulana isn't sure he is sober enough to improvise. She holds her breath, unsure whether to encourage him to continue or to gently change the subject.

"The robot they sent," Valery says, then cuts himself off and sighs again. She can imagine him, pressing his palm to his forehead nervously. "Oh bother, what does it matter? The robot didn't work. We are back to square one. I know what we have to do and I don't want to say it. I'm sick of it."

"Valery," she warns, though her heart aches for him - for a way to support him even from afar.

"Yes, I know," he says, sounding annoyed. "I wasn't supposed to say that. Well, I said it. I wish this nightmare would end."

"Me too." She hesitates, but can't help adding, "I'm making progress. I'm almost done here."

"Are you?" Instead of happy, he sounds... worried? Uncertain? Ulana thinks she can hear the clink of a bottle.

"Yes," she answers. "I'm thinking of leaving Moscow soon. Back to Minsk. I can work with what I have from there."

"Oh." She hears him taking a swing - how drunk is he? "Did you... did you find everything you needed?"

She lived in the Lomonosov library for most of August, reading upwards of fifteen papers a day. She could have read more if it wasn't for the censors. Not even the authorization from the Central Committee, with Shcherbina's signature fresh at the bottom, was enough to get clearance for all that she needed to read. She rubbed her eyes one day and found that it was already September - over a month since the last time she'd seen Valery. Not that she didn't miss him. She did, just as agonizingly as before. But after her escapade to Pripyat, her brain seemed to have clued in that memories of Valery were also a source of unspeakable pain, and the onslaught of their moments together was demoted to a lesser priority, as if to keep her sharpness of mind intact while she continued her research.

"No," she tells him. "But I found enough."

Ulana wants to ask what should be done with the data, with the models she's constructed, with the testimonies she's collected. Is this meant to be for scientists or for a jury? Are they writing a paper or a government report? She'd like to ask him about one of the articles, the Volkov one, on the off chance that he read it before it was censored. It would make everything advance much quicker. Still, she can infer much from the unredacted parts of the abstract and the table of contents. But this isn't the time or place for this conversation, though she does worry sometimes that her documents may be stolen, or that she be made to disappear before she lays it all out into intelligible paragraphs.

"I'll be sad to leave your cat," she says, more lightly.

"Ah, leave him with Olga. Olga Ilyinichna, from downstairs."

"Yes, I know who she is, I've been avoiding her for days. She corners me on the stairs at every chance she gets."

"What? Why?"

"Curious, I suppose. She thinks I'm your girlfriend."

He lets out a hearty laugh. "Did _you_ tell her that?"

"Yes, of course. To get her off my back. The poor old lady was thrilled to learn it, you know. She said something along the lines of 'It's about time the Professor settled!'"

Valery groans. "Shush now," he says.

"She did!" Ulana trudges on mercilessly. "I don't think she realizes how old I am: she asked if we were thinking of having children."

"Please stop, I beg you!"

"I told her we were. I told her we were marrying next spring."

Silence. Ulana can't ever hear him breathing over the line. Has she got too carried away with her teasing? Now she's done it.

"Sorry, I," she starts, but Valery cuts her off.

"Well, she's an old lady. We wouldn't want to disappoint her," he says, offhandedly enough for Ulana to assume he's playing along, though her own light-heartedness has deflated by now. These tales they tell each other - it has got to stop before it gets out of hand.

"No," she agrees anyway. "I'll be sure to invite her to the party after the wedding."

She hears the flicker of a lighter and then a long sigh from Valery. He must be smoking. He smokes too much.

"Who else are we inviting?" he asks after a pause. "To our wedding party."

"Kolya. My son."

"You talked to him?" Valery sounds genuinely happy. He remembered: Ulana feels a knot in her throat.

"Yes, he... Turns out, he doesn't hate me. Or doesn't hate me as much that he won't talk. He's half the reason I'd like to return to Minsk soon."

"Go," he says. "Go. I'm so happy for you. I'd like to meet him, one day. I'm serious."

He's serious, he says. Unlike for the rest of this conversation. Ulana can't help smiling.

"Well, Kolya, then." She doesn't say her daughter's name, because if she does, she won't be able to stay playful: Yulia still won't speak to her. One out of two children not hating her is more than she deserves. Before getting worked up about this, Ulana is quick to add, "And Dmitry Ivanovich, my assistant in the lab. He might burst into tears when I tell him, but he'll be happy for us."

"Your assistant?" Valery huffs. "Should I be jealous?"

"Should you? I'm marrying _you_ , after all."

He's a terrible phone interlocutor, because Ulana has no idea what he's thinking during these long pauses - whether she's stepped over a line. She's half-tempted to take it all back, but Valery speaks at last.

"I'm jealous," he states, slowly. "But he may come."

"Thank you for your permission," she says, a little sarcastic. If they were serious, she doesn't think she'd let that fly. "That's it from my side. Not everyone can travel all the way from Minsk - assuming we're marrying in Moscow."

"Yes," he says. "You're moving in with me."

"Oh? And what about my job?"

"Request a transfer to my Institute. I'll see that it's approved it immediately."

Ah, yes. Of course. As if it were easy to drop all of her years of research and just insert herself into a new Institute. In this scenario, she'd take Dmitry with her just to spite Valery.

"What was your first wedding like?" he asks, before her imaginary self gets too angry.

Ulana rolls her eyes. "Perfunctory. We went to the office, got the marriage license, and got married that same day."

"Did you have a party?"

"Not really. I was..." She marks a pause: this isn't something she often discusses with people. With anyone. She sighs. "I was pregnant, so I couldn't drink. Not much of a party mood, as you can imagine."

"Oh," Valery says, now sounding embarrassed. 

If he were near her, Ulana might smile at him to ease the awkwardness. But all she can do now is sit there in silence and listen to him smoke.

"I don't want ours to be perfunctory," he says.

She was going to be light-hearted about it, but her voice decides to waver a little when she says, "You know it won't be." 

"Hm," Valery agrees. "And afterwards, I'll ask for leave at work and we'll go somewhere nice. Together. For a long time."

"A long time? You're going to get us fired. Or reprimanded."

"I don't care."

She had a vague awareness of a romantic streak in him, but a long holiday together is a little extravagant. Yet wouldn't it be nice, she concedes, to just be able to get away from it all for weeks? Forget about everything? _Something to look forward to when this nightmare is over_ , Valery told her in Pripyat. Ulana doesn't like how attached she's growing to this unlikely fantasy.

"What about your guests to the party?" she asks hastily, before her voice betrays her again.

"Boris. Shcherbina, I mean."

It's _Boris_ now, Ulana notes, with some interest. Speaking of jealousy...

"What, so he can scowl at me on my wedding day?"

"He won't scowl. I won't let him."

"Well, good."

Valery sighs. "He broke a phone today. He was so angry. I've never seen him like that." Ulana stays silent, expectant, and after a pause Valery speaks again. "He got very drunk tonight, too."

"Is he... there with you?"

"What? Uh, no. I'm back in my room. I was supposed to sleep." He sighs again, and his voice softens. "But I wanted to talk to you."

Ulana smiles at this, and then remembers Valery can't see her. She says, "I'm sorry this conversation isn't very intellectually stimulating."

"I don't mind. I like it. It's stimulating in other ways."

"Any other guests, then?" she asks, trying not to laugh at his accidental innuendo.

"Yes," he says. "Marina Gruzinskaya, from my lab. She's been a good friend for many years." 

Elated, Ulana almost says, _I know her_ and _We went to uni together_ , and is even ready to tell him how instrumental she was in their meeting each other, but something makes her hold her tongue. If They are listening, and They might still be, she doesn't want to compromise Marina. This whole conversation, in fact, is a time-ticking bomb. She and Valery have just handed Them the important people in their lives on a silver plate. She wants to scream. Why can't they have a damned normal conversation without this sense of impending doom? 

"We shouldn't be talking about this," Ulana says, dryly.

"Yes, I know," he answers. Another pause. "It's still nice to imagine. I would do it, for what it's worth."

"What?" Her heart picks up at once, beating a rhythm so wild in her ears it's a wonder it's not heard over the phone.

"I love you," he says, quietly, and there it is: that earnest edge in his voice that makes it impossible to dismiss it.

"Valery, you're drunk," she protests, instantly distancing herself from this conversation, because it can't be, they can't be, and when she hangs up the phone his empty flat is going to be unbearable again.

"I am! So what?"

"So you don't know what you're saying. You're going to regret this tomorrow."

"I won't regret anything." He sounds offended. "How is this worse than talking about marrying you?"

"You know why. It wasn't real."

"Wasn't it?" he asks, with some heat in his voice. "Fine. It wasn't real. But do you love me or not?"

"Would it really change anything if I said yes?"

Valery sighs loudly. "Change," he says, as if pondering it. "No, I suppose not. I would make _me_ happy, though," he adds, still sounding hopeful.

"It wouldn't," Ulana says, marvelling at her ability to sound so cold and not mean a word of it. "It would make you miserable, and alone."

"Miserable and alone?" He lets out a bitter laugh that cuts deep into her. "I'm already miserable and alone. But fine, I understand if you don't want me. I just... I'm getting lost in all these lies. I forget what's real and what isn't. I thought this meant something."

"It meant _everything_ ," Ulana says, breathless, because she recognizes the edge in his voice enough to make her fear he'll hang up. "I can't... It's not that I... Valera, please."

The words escape her, infuriatingly. This was never supposed to be a love story, not even a summer fling, not with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Shouldn't he know this? She has a feeling that he does, but isn't sober enough to remember. And yet... She's being a stubborn mule about this, isn't she? It's too late, they crossed that line, she should face what's in front of her instead of denying it. One day he will get tired of waiting, like all the others, and that day she'll return to the monotonous existence of before, now seasoned with an extremely high probability of death.

"I should sleep," Valery says, after so long a pause it startles her to hear his voice. He still sounds bitter. "I'm going to have a monstrous headache tomorrow. Forgive my drunken ramblings."

"No, I," she starts, but he doesn't let her finish.

A click. 

The cat stares up at her, and Ulana feels like crying. Instead, she gets up to start packing at once: she can't spend a day longer in this flat or she'll become insane.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) Thanks to everyone who chimed in [this post](https://chernoblank.tumblr.com/post/186214563309/can-we-talk-about-this-scene-real-quick-its) to make sense of that scene in the abandoned building
> 
> 2) Some visual aids for this chapter [here](https://chernoblank.tumblr.com/post/186006719999/youve-seen-this-paper-before), [here](https://chernoblank.tumblr.com/post/186310223079/to-hell-with-your-deal), and more importantly [here](https://chernoblank.tumblr.com/post/186545965004/sorry-i-still-cant-get-over-how-betrayed)
> 
> 3) I'm not a fan of lifting entire scenes from canons in fic, but I think it was necessary in this case to have Ulana's feelings out in the open, I did my best not to be too repetitive
> 
> 4) I apologize for my utter inability to write anything resembling a happy ending
> 
> 5) Writing for a rarepair can be discouraging at times, so thanks for your comments, kudos and support :)

* * *

There's some poetic irony, she supposes, in meeting in Pripyat like this: the three of them, like the accursed day when she joined them. This school they are meeting in is not unlike the one Kolya and Yulia attended when they were children, with bright colors on the walls and patriotic symbols on the windows. But no school would ever be this dark, this frigid, this deserted in December.

She sees Shcherbina first, on the landing of the stairs to the fourth floor. He was the one who called her the day before late at night - he called her at home, which she wasn't expecting. She's hardly ever there: it's a wonder he reached her at all. He told her he and Valery had to go supervise how the sarcophagus was faring in the winter, and that she was welcome to join them. There was something they needed to discuss with her, he said, and Valery was requesting that she bring her notes. A military vehicle would be sent to Minsk to pick her up early in the morning. 

_Valery_ was requesting. Why couldn't Valery request it himself? He sent her a letter to her Institute in October, hand delivered by a soldier, to re-check his calculations about the maximum time men could spend on the roof. Nothing else, no note for her, just the page full of diagrams. The logistics of what he proposed were so outrageously dangerous that Ulana nearly crossed off the whole page. But she grit her teeth, checked the math, and suggested lowering the number to 90 seconds for each soldier, fully aware with every word she wrote that she was condemning hundreds of men to the kind of gruesome suffering that still haunted her at night. _We don't belong in this world_ , Valery told her in Moscow. She'd have rather not made that decision. The soldier waited patiently for her to finish and left with her reply. She didn't hear from Valery again.

And now she sees him, for the first time in almost four months.

Their gazes meet - only for a split second, because Valery glances away hastily. Ulana scolds her heart to calm down and finishes climbing up the stairs. Shcherbina is saying something, apologizing about the location but she barely hears him: Valery is stepping closer to her. What on earth is he wearing? She never imagined he'd favor turtlenecks. Not that she ever imagined winter wear for Valery, but if she did, she'd have thought he'd wear something along the lines of an ugly woolen sweater, an oversized coat, and a mismatched scarf. Not... this. He looks good.

Valery meets her gaze again, and says, in lieu of a greeting, "They're going to put Dyatlov on trial, and Bryukhanov and Fomin. We're going to be asked to give expert testimony, all three of us. But before that happens..."

He stops speaking. Some pain crosses over his expression - it alarms her at once. What? Why won't he keep talking?

"The Central Committee is sending Legasov to Vienna," Shcherbina says, picking up where Valery left off. "It's the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency."

"Yes, I know what's in Vienna," she tells Shcherbina, tartly, and glances at Valery again. "What are they asking you to do?"

"Tell the world what happened," he says.

Ulana understands. Oh, she understands at once. It doesn't surprise her, really. Of course they'd send Valery, the face of the scientific commission. But what does shock her, for the space of a millisecond, is that there's no question of her going there with him. She did all the research. She wore her eyes out reading articles. She sat there until her wrist was numb making all the figures and diagrams. She laid it all out in ten neatly written pages. She hasn't even discussed it with him. And she isn't part of this? Then Ulana laughs at herself, inwardly: of course she isn't. It isn't the first time it happens to her, though the last time it did she was a very young, baby-faced doctoral student. For all the talk of Soviet men and women being equal, some things in science never change. Research presented by a respectable, greying male professor is better received than when presented by some woman. These decisions are always taken by deans and chairmen and Party men, always have been, and seemingly always will. But is Valery accepting this? Did he even bring up her name? Will he acknowledge her part when he speaks?

He must. She wants to believe he will. Yet here he stands, looking at her expectantly. He wants the data.

"Well, then. You'd better know what happened," Ulana says, with what she hoped would sound like sarcasm but instead comes out like bitterness.

She hands him her report and tells him, too eagerly perhaps, all that it contains: a minute by minute account of the night of the explosion, second by second in some segments. A part of her wants him to desperately acknowledge her work. The other knows her report is fine and doesn't need his approval. She watches him skimming through it and recognizes his professor self at once: a disinterested quick glance, up and down, taking in only a general idea from every page.

That hurts.

Shcherbina is asking her questions she has no patience to answer, not when she's watching Valery flip over months of sleepless nights in mere seconds.

"I've analyzed the data," she tells Valery, still foolishly hoping to get through him. "Toptunov was telling the truth. They shut the reactor down, and then it exploded." She takes out a copy of the Volkov article out of a folder to show it to him. "I think this article may have the answer, but two pages have been removed."

She hands it to him, but Valery doesn't extend his hand for it, barely glancing at it. Not curious. Not even interested. What's the matter with him? Is he still sulking about the drunken phone call, is this why he won't even pretend to be civil to her? And then it hits her, and it's infinitely worse than a lover's tiff: this indifference is academic in nature. It's guilt, guilt written all over Valery's face.

"You've seen this before," she whispers. The building is freezing, and she feels the cold inside her bones when he deigns to meet her gaze.

"Please, believe me when I tell you that I had no idea it could cause an explosion," he says, with that earnest edge she's heard so often before but that now skeeves her out, makes her sick. "None of us knew," he adds.

"None of you knew what?" she asks, brutally.

He starts telling her all about the paper - he even knew Volkov personally it seems. He knows everything. He knew. Ulana spent nearly a month fighting librarians and tearing her hair out to make sense of the missing pages. Days, weeks she could have spent with Kolya. And Valery knew, and didn't see fit to tell her. She does follow what he's saying, on autopilot, but when he tells her about graphite tips in the control rods she has to step away from him.

Of course.

That's the answer.

The monstrosity of it all has her staggering, and for one moment Ulana considers sinking in a nearby chair to recover. They didn't know. Akimov bled to death, disintegrated alive in that hospital bed never knowing that what he thought was their salvation was in fact their undoing. She hears the vivid whimpers of the workers again, _We did everything right_. They didn't - but they also did. If only this could have been prevented. If only they could have been warned. The Volkov paper burns in her hands. She irrationally wants to tear it to pieces.

Valery, who was explaining everything to Shcherbina in easier terms, now turns to her. He still looks overly cautious, as if seeking an absolution from her, but she has none to give.

"When I saw the reactor blown open, I still didn't think it could be this flaw in the AЗ-5," he says, pleadingly.

The terrible thing is that she must believe him, because until now she's never known him to lie. A tiny, annoying little voice asks her what else has he omitted to tell her, what else has he lied about - that time, in that jail cell, did he mean what he said or did he really know how to push her right buttons like she feared, for his own personal gain? Ulana slams that little voice shut into the deepest corner of her mind. It's not the time for this. There are 16 RBMK reactors in the Soviet Union, and all those operators must be warned at once. All those control rods must be replaced. This is the only way. No one else should ever suffer like Akimov, like Toptunov, like Ignatenko. Like Lyudmilla. The goal couldn't be clearer.

And yet.

She can't believe her ears when Shcherbina argues to keep this quiet, to make a ludicrous deal with the KGB. Valery can't possibly agree to this. He cannot. But he looks torn, lost, alternating looks between the two of them as if uncertain whom to side with. When she protests, Shcherbina towers over her, stands uncomfortably close to her, shields her physically from Valery to stop him from looking at her. In other circumstances, she might wonder what on earth she has stepped into, and why the hell they are bickering over Valery like this. 

"They'll go after your family, they'll go after your friends," Shcherbina warns him, and Valery stares at her. That damned phone call where they named all their friends and family. He must be thinking of it as well, regretting it as keenly as she does. But this too, Ulana brushes aside. What are they, what is she when they can spare millions from the ignominious fates of the plant workers, of the unborn children, of all the displaced?

"You have a chance to talk to the world, Valery," she says, deliberately using his first name in the hopes of getting him to listen to her, if only this one time. He has a chance that was denied to her. A chance that was robbed from her and handed to him. Her voice wavers. "If that chance were mine..."

"But it isn't," Shcherbina reminds her, harshly, and oh, how it hurts to be reminded.

Still, Ulana keeps her head up high, unflinching as he scolds her and lectures her about bravery. She, who stood by shells of men, wiping the blood from their noses and pieces of internal organs from their mouths as they told her all that they knew. Who spent a night in a cold jail cell, her heart in her throat every time a KGB agent peered at her from the door slit, expecting to be beaten or raped. Who, despite being a lousy, inadequate mother, sat next to Lyudmilla and helped her dress when it was time to leave the hospital, because no one else would. Does this truly not matter to them? Either of them?

"To hell with your deal," she tells him, bitingly. "And to hell with our lives."

She glances at Valery. Valery, who didn't trust her; Valery, who sent her on a blind quest to prove a point as if she were one of his young students; Valery, who with his silence also lied to her.

"Someone has to start telling the truth," she says, looking straight at him.

He can't even hold her gaze.

* * *

The same vehicle that dropped her off is waiting for them outside as they exit the building. Shcherbina climbs in the front, leaving Ulana and Valery in the back. It's not a very large car (boxy, military and utilitarian), and the roads are slippery, uncleared of snow, so it means sliding against him at every turn, closer than she'd prefer at the moment. Ulana presses herself against the window as much as she can possibly manage, pretending to look at the empty streets of Pripyat, rendered even more desolate by the blanket of snow.

"The Polissya is still operational," Shcherbina tells her, half-turning to face the backseats. "If you'd rather not be driven back to Minsk today, that is. You'd arrive close to midnight if you did."

Heavens, no. She's not staying in this nightmarish place a minute longer than is necessary.

"Have your man drive me back right away," she answers.

"Not right away," Valery has the gall to say. "Our flight back to Moscow isn't until seven this evening." He makes a gesture with her report, that he is still holding. "I may have questions."

Ulana scoffs at this. "If you have questions, Professor Legasov, I'm sure you can figure them out from the text. Everything has been referenced and demonstrated carefully."

She is still pretending to look out the window, but she can manage a glimpse of him in the reflection. He looks stunned, and then angry.

"Are you _refusing_ to answer my questions?" he asks, and the incredulous edge of his tone makes him sound almost humorous.

She turns her head to glare at him.

"Look," she says, still using the formal address. "It's your investigation now, isn't it? Yours to present. Familiarize yourself with the material. Amend it how you see fit for whatever you decide to say in Vienna. Fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle with the precious information you knew and didn't see fit to tell me."

It was a noisy, bumpy ride to begin with, but with the silence that grows in the car it becomes even more noticeable.

He lets out a disbelieving chuckle. "Do you think I... hid this from you, what, maliciously?"

"I don't know why you hid it, Legasov," she snarls, and apparently they're doing this here, in front of Shcherbina and the soldier driving them. "I only know that you did."

"Oh, of course, and you immediately assume the worst interpretation." Anger makes him caustic. That is something Ulana didn't want to know about him. "I wasn't sure if this was the cause of this accident. I didn't want to think it was possible at all."

"And it didn't occur to you to point me in the right direction? Of saying the author's name, of telling me why you suspected at all?"

He stays silent for a moment - having the decency to look guilty for a brief instant. But his expression grows impatient again.

"I wanted to see whether you'd arrive at the same conclusion," he says. "If you did, then I'd know there could be no doubt that it was the cause."

Oh, no. No, no, no. That isn't how this was supposed to work at all. It's so crushingly demeaning, like she isn't capable of following his train of thoughts. Ulana feels like strangling him.

"Whether I'd arrive at the same conclusion? Like some double-blind experiment? Thank you for giving me the same courtesy as a lab rat at worst, and as a student of yours at best."

"A student of mine? What? I've never considered you a student."

"I thought you said you trusted me." Oh, brilliant: her voice breaks. She shudders as she remembers that conversation, the warmth of his arm around her waist as he held her close and said she was the only scientist he could trust to find the truth. She believed him. Ulana has to close her eyes, but only briefly, just enough to get her bearings. Why must she suffer this agony on top of her professional outrage? She clears her throat, annoyed with herself. "I took that to mean you considered me your equal. Your peer. Not your assistant that you leave in the dark, to run the dirty work for you."

"You weren't my assistant either! You aren't making any sense. Is this one of your games again?"

The rush of anger to her head is so strong it leaves her dizzy. When she speaks, instead of shouting like she'd like, her voice comes out strangled, hoarse.

"Don't you dare to bring that up now," she warns, pointing a finger at him, in his face. "Stop the car!" she tells the driver.

The soldier, probably used to obeying at once when given a command, stops the car, but then looks at Shcherbina hesitantly. Ulana uses this moment of confusion to open her door.

"Where are you going?" Shcherbina asks, sounding bewildered. "It's freezing out there!"

"I don't care," Ulana mutters, but when she steps out of the car the frigid wind hits her in the face. Yes, this isn't... the best of ideas. Night is already falling, leaving the streets in the desolation of twilight so particular to this town. Nevertheless, she slams the door shut and steps onto what used to be the sidewalk, now covered in snow, and sinks her thick beret down to her ears. She recognizes the street: the swimming pool used to be here, though the building is barely recognizable under the snow after seven months of disuse. 

"We're still half a kilometer away from the Polissya!" Shcherbina insists, this time raising his voice. He's opened his own door enough to have his face peek out. Yes, she can see the tall building from here, perhaps ten blocks away.

"I don't care!" Ulana yells, but entirely at the wrong person.

"Fix this!" Boris shouts too now: at Valery, who opens the door of the car and steps outside with evident reluctance.

He shivers: he has no gloves and no hat, so he puts his hands in the pockets of his coat at once. 

"Get back in the car, Ulana," he says with a sigh, as if speaking to an unruly child. 

How is it possible to feel so much anger towards a person? A person that once meant all that was right in a world of horrors.

"I don't want to be near you," she manages to say.

"You won't have to be," Valery says, raising his voice. "You'll go back to Minsk and I to Moscow, and we'll be done with this. I'll see you at the trial and then never again. So I'm sure you can bear to sit there in the car for five more minutes."

Ulana flinches away from him as if she were slapped. She begins walking, numb, though it's a bit challenging to do so in the uncleared sidewalk. She hears Valery's footsteps crunching in the snow, nearing her, but it still shocks her when he grabs her by the arm to stop her, yanking hard enough to make her face him.

"I don't understand!" he says. "What does it matter now why I did what I did? I thought you didn't love me?"

"Of course I loved you!" How much easier it is to say it like this, in the past tense. Valery looks stricken. Ulana pulls her arm back, just as hard as he did. "And look what good that did us. But this isn't about that."

"Then what is it about?"

"It's about respect," she says. "It's about my work, that I thought was _our_ work, now becoming _your_ work. And for what? So that you can feed lies to the world and wag your tail when the government pets your head for good behavior?"

Valery takes a step closer, too close, but Ulana doesn't budge.

"Yes, wagging my tail is exactly what I do, what I've always done. My hands are tied. I've done all that I could here! And I told you I wasn't a good man. I said it clearly on the first night we were together. It's not my fault that you imagined otherwise."

"I should have listened," she bites back. "Then maybe all these months of work to make our country a safer place wouldn't have been in vain."

"No one forced you to work," Valery says, his tone forceful. " _I_ didn't force you. You came out here out of your own volition. And you stayed because you wanted to."

"Yes," she concedes, suddenly feeling deflated. "Because I wanted to. Because I had to. But also because _you_ asked me to. Because we were in this together - or so I thought."

"We were," he says, and slides his arms around her. "We were."

It happens much too quickly for her to be able to fight back. She puts both her hands on Valery's chest to stop him, but he crushes their mouths together in a kiss that startles her, repulses her, and excites her at the same time. He manages to slip his tongue between her lips, kissing her wantonly, thoroughly, and she shudders in his arms in spite of herself. Damn him! It's as if he didn't hear a word she said about the research in his eagerness to snog her. His glasses are hurting her. Is Shcherbina watching this from the car, is he seeing how she's melting into his kiss? Does he think, like Valery apparently does, that this will fix everything? How humiliating. She pushes Valery away as hard as she can, enough to make him stumble backwards.

"Get off me," she says, her voice low and hoarse as she wipes her mouth.

"Ulana," he protests, arms extended as if ready to hold her again.

"Don't touch me!" she shouts. "Don't touch me, not now, not like this."

"Then when?" Valery shouts too, sounding so frustrated that she wonders if this is salvageable at all, or if they have already self-destructed in less than seven months.

The sound of footsteps on the snow startles them both. At some point, Shcherbina stepped out of the car and is now standing closer to them. How long has he been there, watching them? How much did he hear? Once again Ulana can't read his face. He looks serious, as always, but there's also a hint of... concern? disquiet? in his closed expression as he alternates his gaze between them. He looks _sorry_.

"What do you want?" she asks him, not rudely, but there's no way to ask this question and not sound somewhat hostile.

"To get you back in the car," Shcherbina says. 

He sounds unexpectedly gentle. Ulana doesn't know how to feel about that. Her face grows even warmer. What must she look like right now, all flustered, lips swollen after that passionate kiss? Valery's mouth is slightly pink from her lipstick. She's never been one to feel self-conscious about this, but something in Shcherbina's face makes it unbearable to be standing here a minute longer. She walks past them, without looking at either of them. She hears both their footsteps behind her. 

"Sit in the front," Shcherbina suggests. When they reach the car, he holds the door open for her as she climbs inside, next to the soldier. "Drive to the Polissya, boy," he tells the driver, and slams the door shut.

"What!" Ulana protests, but the soldier hits the gas and drives away, leaving the two men behind - obviously this was Shcherbina's design. She punches the window, uselessly, once again reduced to silence. One betrayal over another.

She turns to look over her shoulder. Valery is standing there in the middle of the street, his gaze lost. Next to him, Shcherbina seems to be berating him. Over what, she cannot fathom.

* * *

The Polissya is surprisingly lively - as lively as Pripyat can get in the winter, considering the circumstances. It seems a contingent of soldiers has been moved here for shelter, enough to crowd the lobby. Ulana was thinking of making her way to the small bar, but she finds it full of men drinking vodka straight from the bottle. The soldier at the reception desk takes pity on her and offers her a glass and his own bottle. At least the government is generous about this, she muses as she pours herself one shot, and then another, waiting for the buzz to kick. It's the least they can do.

"Someone is supposed to drive me to Minsk," she tells him, and he reaches for his radio receiver with promises to find out for her.

Ulana sits in one of the sofas in the lobby to wait. She sent the driver boy back to Valery and Shcherbina after he dropped her, so they will soon join her, she supposes. Unless they want nothing to do with her, which wouldn't surprise her. She resists the urge to press her face into her hands. She'll have time to commiserate all she wants when she gets home, but not a moment before. She stays there sitting very straight, thirsty for another drink, busying herself with thinking of nothing. Certainly not of Valery. And most certainly not of the RBMK reactors still operating in the country, the nearest a mere 3 kilometers away.

An eternity later Shcherbina steps in the lobby, but without Valery. He glances at her, then heads to the reception desk. The soldier salutes him and speaks to him briefly, before handing him the vodka bottle he lent to Ulana earlier along with two small glasses. She stiffens when Shcherbina comes sit next to her: she's not sure she has enough presence of mind to deal with him right now. The vodka, though, she accepts gratefully. At this rate, it'll make for an interesting drive back to Minsk.

"The car will be here in ten minutes," he tells her, and downs his shot in one swing.

"Thank you," she says, politely.

Shcherbina sighs. "I'm sorry for all this."

She makes an amused sound: it's the same thing he told her in the landing of the stairs, earlier. 

"Are you really?" she asks. "You've won, haven't you? He hates me personally and professionally now, so he'll take your side in Vienna."

"You can't possibly think he hates you," Shcherbina says with a chuckle that makes her want to hurl the bottle of vodka at him. "And nobody's won anything here. If anything, we've all lost."

"I can agree with your second point," she concedes.

He pours her another drink before she reaches to do it.

"I know you don't think much of me," he says. "But I do sit in the Cabinet. I'll do everything in my power to see that the deal to fix the reactors is upheld. I'll see to it personally."

"Oh good. Well, I hope another accident doesn't happen in the meantime," she says, rather unimpressed. The fourth shot of vodka finally gives her a much needed kick.

"I hope so too." He shakes his head. "Just because it takes longer doesn't mean it won't work. Did Valery ever tell you? I was making arrangements to get you out of jail; it would have taken a day or two. But he bulldozed over me to have it done immediately."

Ulana did not know that. She had no idea Shcherbina got involved at all. Valery showed up, had her freed, and then they were otherwise occupied the rest of the evening. She glances at him, a little mystified: she never considered he'd bother.

"He didn't say," she tells him. "But that's the Valery I know. Or thought I knew."

"He's still the same Valery. But after eight months here... Men who return from the war are never the same."

"It's not just the _men_ who suffer in the war," she answers, pointedly, and sees him roll his eyes in exasperation.

"Suit yourself," Shcherbina says. "You've done your part. I told you I'll do mine. And don't do anything stupid now. They made him accountable for you. Did he not tell you that either?"

"What?"

"When he freed you. He promised to be accountable for you. So if you go and do something stupid, something heroic and brave, it'll end badly for him. Now you know."

Ulana blinks. She feels a little ill, all of a sudden, and not because of the vodka on an empty stomach. _Accountable_ for her? As if she were, what, a loose canon, a dissident? A reckless child? Everything about the way their government works makes her want to vomit. Ulana got involved in all this to stop the disaster, to find out what happened, to stop people from dying: not to be treated like a dangerous criminal who cannot be trusted to make the right judgment. She feels watched, again. Anything she ever does or even considers doing will put Valery in danger now.

Shcherbina adds, more acerbically, "I don't know what happened between you two. But don't make this more difficult for him."

Oh, ho. She doesn't miss the accusing edge in his sentence - in his command, really. He may be sitting down but he irradiates the same physically hostile energy of the abandoned school. How come according to them she's always the difficult one, making things harder? 

"Or what?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

"Or nothing! What do you think I'll do, follow you to Minsk to scold you? I'm not trying to fight with you."

"Aren't you?"

For the first time in all the months she's known him, Shcherbina looks visibly uncomfortable, so much that it makes her uneasy as well. They've been at odds all evening, or perhaps longer than that, and why? Ulana isn't sure she'd like to know the answer. Sometimes being around them gives her the impression of butting against an unbreakable binomial - when she's only an unmatching coefficient. Shcherbina closes his fists and averts his eyes hastily. He then bolts out of the sofa and takes a few steps away, but changes his mind and turns to face her again. Ulana stiffens more, disliking how he towers over her now. 

"He's just one man, Khomyuk," he says. "He shouldn't bear the weight of the world on his shoulders alone. Our job is to help him with the load."

Her first instinct is to reply she's not in this world to be anyone's helper, that she has her own battles to fight, that she can stand her ground on her own. But the foreign selflessness of what Shcherbina is suggesting stuns her into silence.

"He's outside. Smoking," he tells her. "I lent him my gloves and hat. Try to be kind to him, if you decide to say goodbye."

She isn't sure she can stomach another conversation with Valery, but the army vehicle to drive her back to Minsk must be arriving or be there already, in any case. Ulana stands up, clutching her purse to her chest. She pours herself one more shot of vodka, for courage. Shcherbina extends his hand: a peace offering, judging from his expression. She shakes it, not as firmly as she would have liked.

"Stay healthy," he tells her, and in their circumstances it's the best they can aspire to.

The vehicle is parked on the street, far from the long steps leading out of the hotel. Ulana puts her beret and her gloves on as soon she steps outside. Night has already fallen. Valery is standing next to the doors, barely visible in the shadows if not for the butt of his cigarette and the glare of the lone streetlight on the crystals of his glasses. He is looking at her. Ulana shivers, but not from the cold. If she goes near him, they will only hurt each other more, and yet she can't help stepping closer. He takes the cigarette out of his mouth as she nears him. Shcherbina's hat is too big for him, it gives him an unbecomingly comical air. But also: he's smiling, a pitiful grimace of a smile. What to say to him? She wishes it were as easy as shaking Shcherbina's hand: so long, we had a good run, good-bye.

"Good luck in Vienna," she blurts out.

She regrets it at once: dragging the source of their disagreement to the front of the classroom to be dissected again, really? Valery huffs, losing his smile, and looks away from her into the eerie darkness of the deserted streets. Ulana sighs. She should just leave and be done with this, and yet she shuffles her feet, unwilling to step away just yet.

"Tell me the truth," Valery says, meeting her gaze again. "I can't figure it out. It wasn't all bad. Was it?"

"No," she answers. "It was beautiful, for the most part."

"And is there no way to fix this?" He sighs, looking at her with those pleading eyes. "Is there no hope at all?"

She wants this. She wants for there to be a way. If she could go to Vienna with him, perhaps. If he sat with her for hours, discussing her analysis like she imagined he would. If he promised to uphold their findings.

"In time, maybe," she says. Time will likely soften the blow of losing her work in favor of the status quo. "But you and I have little time to spare."

Something hardens in Valery's expression. "There was never much hope to begin with, was there."

"No," she says. "But pretending there was made it worthwhile."

"Pretending." He scoffs. "I meant every single word I ever said to you."

Something flutters in her heart when she hears that, and yet she can't help asking bitterly, "And what of the words you didn't say?"

"Don't start," he warns.

"I'm not. I'm leaving."

Should she shake his hand? Hug him? Kiss him on both cheeks like an old friend? Or simply turn around and leave? Ulana extends her gloved hand for a handshake, deciding to be clinical about it, but Valery is still holding his cigarette in his right, so he gives her his left: they stand there, awkwardly holding hands like two children. She gives in, then, and steps closer to him. When he makes no move to turn away, Ulana presses a quick kiss to his mouth. Valery squeezes her hand when their lips touch, and lets go of her as soon as she steps back.

"I'll think of you," he says, when she's too far to answer.

The ride to Minsk is endless: she won't allow herself to cry in front of a soldier like some young, brokenhearted thing, but the stupid tears seem intent to spill from her eyes.


End file.
